


Twilight, Eat Your Heart Out

by 7_wonders



Series: The Tall, Dark Stranger Those Warnings Prepared You For [2]
Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Sorry Not Sorry, another vampire michael fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 05:24:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7_wonders/pseuds/7_wonders
Summary: Pondering your own mortality is never a good long-term solution, especially when you have to compare it to the immortal vampire you’ve found yourself entangled in a relationship with.





	Twilight, Eat Your Heart Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! You asked, and so I delivered. I've decided to make this a 'series,' whatever that is (let's just call it a loosely-connected universe of multiple oneshots). Feedback is always appreciated and, if you enjoyed, I would love if you left me a kudos or a comment. Happy reading!

Jealousy, in any sense of the word, is not an emotion that you’re very familiar with. Of course, there were occasions throughout school where you felt wrongfully snubbed of an award or a grade, certain that you deserved a higher score. Never before have you been in a relationship where just the mere sight of your lover with another person fills you with self-doubt and envy. You’re better than that; your happiness and sense of fulfillment, you’ve always believed, does not rely on another person. At least, that seemed to be the case before you got yourself entangled with a suave, mysterious Antichrist who just so happens to also be a vampire.

Entering into a relationship (you wouldn’t dare to call him your boyfriend, or even use the word ‘dating’ to describe the odd situation that you’ve found yourself in) with arguably the most dangerous creature in the world was not something you had penciled into your five year plan. Lately, it seems like nothing is going according to the plan that you had meticulously crafted upon graduating college and landing your job at Kineros. You weren’t expecting to have your first bona fide lover, nor did you believe that you would suddenly learn about the warring forces that are essentially playing a game of chess and using humans as the pawns. You also never thought that you would be an accessory to murder.

_Multiple_ murders, at that.

Blood bags don’t satiate Michael, who always complains that blood is so much better when it comes directly from the ‘source.’ In an attempt to quell Michael’s more…sadistic tendencies, you’ve offered to allow him to drink from you whenever he needs to. Shockingly enough, it turns out that even the cruelest of vampires, the one who is arguably the ruler of all others of his species, has a heart when it comes to certain humans. He had explained to you how taking blood from you multiple times a week, no matter how small the amount, would eventually kill you. So here you are, standing in some alleyway acting as the bait for Michael’s next meal.

This routine hasn’t seemed to get any easier since the first time Michael asked you on a hunt with him. Lure in an unsuspecting victim who has less-than-innocent intentions with you, guide them back far enough to where any wayward screams won’t be heard, and let Michael handle the rest. A fairly simple ploy, but one that never failed to have your stomach curdling with some sort of negative emotion. Before tonight, you had never been able to pinpoint what this foreign feeling was. 

It’s while you’re watching Michael pin tonight’s prey, a pretty brunette that had been planning on robbing you, against a wall that you start to realize what this might be. The low lighting that the street lamps cast into the alley glints off of his talon ring, which he uses to quickly and precisely slit open the woman’s throat. His hand tangles in her hair, yanking her head back and allowing him to drink deeply from the flowing wound. She moans weakly, pathetically, and you become aware of something else that’s nestled right beside the disgust that forces you to avert your eyes from the gory scene.

You’re jealous. Not only are you jealous, but you’re jealous of the woman that Michael’s currently draining dry. You understand why everything about this situation looks so intimate; Michael’s nature, of course, is seduction. His ethereal beauty and dangerous charm are integral in beguiling his victims, and he’s going to use these weapons to his advantage. Still, the intimacy of this situation has you nearly doubling over in disgust.

Michael, finally satisfied with his meal, carelessly discards the barely-breathing woman on the ground like she’s little more than an empty wrapper. He grins up at you, blood-stained teeth glinting in the light of the moon. Gracefully stepping over the body, he approaches you slowly and fluidly. It’s almost as if he’s a predator stalking his prey, although that isn’t too much of a stretch; you are, after all, human. There’s hardly any mess on his face, always the clean eater.

“You certainly do have a way of picking the most delicious meals for me, pet.” Michael darts his tongue out, licking a few stray drops of blood from his lips before capturing your lips in a kiss. The copper taste of his kisses, while familiar by now, are still something you don’t think you’ll ever get used to. “Shall we be on our way? The night is, after all, still young.”

“Don’t you need to clean up this mess first?” Michael smirks, waving one of his bejeweled hands in the air nonchalantly.

“A simple phone call is all it takes, nothing to worry about.” He slings his arm around you, silver talon coming dangerously close to puncturing your shirt and your shoulder. 

As you leave with Michael, you can’t help but cast your glance to the glassy eyes of the corpse that lay sprawled on the ground. Although there’s no sign of life left in her body, you swear you can feel her stare follow you when you round the corner.

This trend continues for the next two weeks, with every feed that you help bring to Michael invoking that same fiery jealousy in the pit of your stomach. These people, you know, are nothing more than food to Michael. But the way that he looks at them right before he strikes, convincing them that they’re safe and to give themselves over to him, makes you realize that you’re not special. That tender look, which you thought was special only to you, is just another play in Michael’s book. Slowly, you start to become aware of the fact that maybe it’s not just jealousy that you feel whenever Michael must partake in a feed.

You’re scared, as well.

Every human that he kills, every possible victim that walks past you when you’re scouting for Michael, reminds you that there is a very thin line separating them from you. You could just as easily be Michael’s next kill, the vampire draining you and leaving your body on the wet pavement with little more than a glance that one might give a dead deer on the side of the road. Michael claims to be fond of you, says that he couldn’t imagine killing you, but you know just how volatile Michael’s kind are. One day he could be your lover, and the next day he could be your killer. It’s a fact that remains in the back of your mind, always making sure you’re alert for any changes in his emotions towards you. 

When you meet one of Michael’s oldest friends (both in age and amount of time that they’ve known each other), that fear morphs into dread. The Countess, as she’s known as, owns the Hotel Cortez and uses its’ guests as her food source, which Michael considers to be a genius move. She’s radiant, mysterious, and absolutely gorgeous; you start to wonder if every vampire becomes ethereally beautiful when they’re turned, or if attractiveness is a prerequisite to vampirism. She had appeared suddenly, visiting with Michael in his plush office when you arrived for a “late night of work.” You were stunned by this goddess sitting opposite your lover, the two clutching crystal glasses of blood. 

“Elizabeth, allow me to introduce you to (Y/N) (Y/L/N),” Michael said warmly, standing with his visitor on his arm. “(Y/N), this is the Countess, my closest confidante for the past hundred years or so.”

She held her hand out for you to take, a talon ring all-too-similar to Michael’s digging into the skin of your wrist when she pulled you towards her. “What a stunning creature you are, my dear.”

“Oh, well, thank you,” you said in a voice an octave higher than your usual, causing Michael and the Countess to have laughed.

“My, my, Michael, it has been quite some time since you’ve found yourself enamoured with a human in this way. Why, the last had to have been Oscar, back in the late eighteen hundreds?” The Countess smiled wistfully. “It always did amuse me, how he would rather come up with the fanatical idea that you had a portrait stashed away somewhere that grew old in your place instead of believing what he had seen to be true.”

You had been jarred out of your semi-stunned state upon the familiarity of this man’s idea. “Wait, are you telling me that Michael once had a relationship with Oscar _Wilde_?” The two smiled conspiratorially, choosing to remain coyly silent instead of telling you if your suspicion is true.

“My dear Countess, we have not had the chance to reconnect since the turn of the century. For all you know, I could have had a harem of human lovers in that time,” Michael cooed.

“I know you too well for that to be more than a fantasy. Say, has it really been that long since we’ve last seen one another?” The Countess spoke, leaving you mildly upset that the two were basically talking directly above your head.

“Unfortunately.”

The platinum vampire sighed. “Nothing like the rich blood of those who indulged themselves due to their belief that they would die when the calendar changed to the year two thousand. Of course,” she smiled patronizingly at you, “you were hardly more than a babe then, weren’t you?”

You tightly returned her smile as Michael chuckled at his friend’s joke, the two continuing with their reminiscing. Eventually that night, you had left early, feigning exhaustion from a long week in order to get out of the awkward situation. Awkward for you, at least. For the two immortal beings, you’re sure you were little more than a pest, a persistent fly that finally managed to find an exit through a window.

It’s not as if you’re angry that they made fun of your youth. You can’t place the blame on two creatures who have lived hundreds of years combined for picking on how you’ve only existed for a mere blip on their timelines. Instead, the two inadvertently opened your eyes to what lay underneath all of the jealousy. A lingering sadness wraps itself around you, reminding you it’s there from the moment you wake up, and whispering in your ear to lull you to sleep. You’re sure that Michael’s noticed the change in your mood by now, being so attuned to your thoughts and feelings even without the fledgling link that had been created through him consistently feeding from you. 

As a person who relies on logic and research, you love facts. With this situation, however, the facts of the matter are not too appealing to analyze. For starters, you like Michael Langdon, a lot more than you’re supposed to. What had started as a simple ‘enemies with benefits’ situation has evolved into something that you never saw coming: your life is now a bad vampire fanfiction. What kind of human falls in <strike>love</strike> a relationship with a vampire who feeds from them in exchange for immunity and confidential information? You can only pray to whatever’s out there that this affection you’ve developed isn’t sensed by Michael, lest he decide to prey on you even more than he already does.

Even if you didn’t care for Michael like you do, it’s impossible to deny just how introspective you’ve become since meeting the Countess. Maybe it’s because you had been so swept up in the enigma that is Michael, but after he pierced your neck with his fangs while having you pinned against your desk, you sort of forgot about the fact that Michael’s going to remain the same as he’s always been. More specifically, you forgot that you won’t remain the same. It was easy to imagine him as your equal, with you holding the leverage of your tantalizing blood over his head and using that to your advantage. You became an odd team, helping Michael to successfully hunt and kill people whose deaths wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion. 

When the Countess reminded you of that fact, of how you came into the picture in what’s essentially the opposite of dog years (does every vampire year equal 70 human years?), it forced that issue of immortality versus mortality to center stage. No matter how your attempt to change the phrase, the words mean the same thing: you are going to grow older and die, while Michael will be the same as he’s always been and continue to go on without you. It’s not as if this is new information for you, considering one of the first things Michael told you was how he’s been on the Earth for over 400 years. It is, however, something you’ve deliberately avoided thinking about while trying to navigate the schematics of suddenly taking up company with a vampire.

Michael could, of course, give you immortality to allow you to live for eternity with him, but who’s to say that he’ll even still continue to tolerate you beyond next month? Immortality is a gift to Michael and his kind, and it’s not a gift to be given out frivolously. All humans are, all you are, at the end of the day, to Michael, is a meal. Nothing more. He could easily decide that he’s bored of you, his new human toy, and drain you of every drop of your blood until you’re just as lifeless as the corpses you’ve watched him devour lately. Humans are expendable, a renewable resource that Michael is determined to cultivate when he brings about the apocalypse in order to fulfill his father’s wishes. 

Even if Michael weren’t to get bored of you, it seems like he just brings in a new human to capture his attention until they, too, die. It’s a constantly revolving door of human lovers, you realize, ones who do nothing but serve as distractions for the vampiric Antichrist until the time comes for his ‘mission.’ What makes you better than Oscar Wilde? The man based one of his greatest works on Michael and penned many an eloquent letter for his blond-haired lover, only for said lover to allow him to be exiled and dead from meningitis. If he didn’t want to take the most well-versed and passionate of his lovers to be his eternal companion, what would make him want to take you? You are, after all, a mere researcher at a robotics company whose greatest accomplishment will likely be nothing more than improving sex robots (at least that’s what you tell yourself). 

It’s a train of thought that makes you especially melancholic. Why even bother to continue associating with Michael if he’s just going to toss you out like trash when you’re one day old and withered? It’s never good on one’s psyche to ponder mortality for an extended amount of time, but it’s all you can think about whenever you see Michael. So, like any person who’s not good at confronting their emotions would do, you ignore the source of all of this inner turmoil. While that’s easier said than done, all you really have to do is get work done during the day and lock yourself in your house at night. Easy, right?

You’ve managed to exponentially increase your productivity at work during the daytime, eliminating your need to work into the evening hours in an effort to finish your projects. The hardest part is the evening, when you can hear Michael crooning through your apartment door in that honey-laced voice to just let him in, pulling out every pet name in the book in an attempt to persuade you. You almost gave in a couple of nights ago, hand on the doorknob before you stumbled back and hid under the covers in your bedroom. After that night, though, he finally seemed to get the hint and left you alone. You’re lonely, lonelier than you’ve been since you first met Michael, but it’s for the best.

Tonight, it seems as if your week of avoiding interaction with a certain mysterious blond is finally catching up with you. You get home late, the moon already hanging high in the sky by the time you finish getting drinks with a couple of friends. Unlocking your front door, you can immediately tell that something’s off. The window, which was closed before you left, is now open, the curtains billowing inwards. Your heart beats wildly for a few moments, until you catch Michael’s distinctive scent: expensive cologne and something woodsy, both masking the metallic smell of blood that always follows him. 

“I know you’re here, Dracula, you big fucking nerd,” you grumble, shutting the door behind you and tossing your keys on the counter.

“Why do you continue to insist on calling me that horrendous nickname?” You can’t see where he’s at, but you can hear his voice coming from somewhere in the kitchen. 

“Sorry, Mephistopholes, it won’t happen again.” You only jump slightly when, in a split second, Michael’s got his arms wrapped around you from behind and his chin resting on your shoulder.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” It’s not a question; he knows it just as well as you do.

“And what if I am?”

“Well, I certainly don’t enjoy it. I also don’t like thinking I’ve upset you in some way.” Michael grabs you by your shoulders, spinning you around and backing you against the kitchen counter so he can look at you. “So? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. I’ve just been tired, haven’t really wanted to see anyone lately,” you shrug, staring at the shine on Michael’s shoes. Your eyes widen when his large hand grips your chin, forcing you to look up towards him.

“You know, I don’t tolerate liars, (Y/N). I could very well just read your thoughts to figure out what’s troubling you, but I won’t because you’ve told me how uncomfortable that makes you. So, you can either tell me know, or we can stand here like this until you decide you’re ready to talk like an adult instead of giving me your childish silent treatment,” Michael snaps. 

“What if it’s because of your attitude, hm?”

“It’s not,” Michael says with his eyes narrowed, daring you to try and come up with another excuse. “I’m giving you one more chance before my patience runs out, (Y/N).”

“You’re infuriating,” you scoff, pushing him off of you (surprisingly, he lets you) and stalking off towards your bedroom.

“Is it something to do with work? Did one of the victims that you caught for me actually touch you? Did the Countess scare you?” He knows he’s got you when your back stiffens at his last guess, breathing hitching before you walk faster. Unfortunately, due to his speed, Michael’s already sitting perched on your bed by the time you cross into the room. “So the Countess scared you?”

“Shut up about it, please.”

“I’m not going to. I care about you, and I don’t want to see you upset in any way.”

“You care about me?” Michael nods, not sensing the sarcasm in your voice. “Just like you cared about all of your other lovers, who you then cast out and let die when they grew boring to you?”

When you turn around to glare at him, Michael’s already staring at you with those wide blue eyes. Instead of getting angry, or firing back, things you expect him to do, he just reaches out a hand and grabs your own. He remains silent, probably to let you calm down while you continue to throw daggers at him with your eyes, and you allow him to pull you onto his lap. 

“Hearing about my previous human lovers frightened you?”

“Not in the sense of, ‘oh, I’m jealous that he’s been with others before me.’ It frightens me how insignificant a role in your eternal life I’ll play,” you confess.

“Why do you believe that?” Michael’s not asking this question to be condescending, you know, but to truly understand the thought process behind your feelings.

“I’m a mere blip on your timeline; I barely take up any space, considering how long you’ve lived and how long you will live. I’m like a fucking baby compared to you, and I truly don’t know anything about the world in the way that you do. Why am I to believe that I’m anything different compared to all of the other human partners you’ve taken? You haven’t turned any of them, and there’s no way that you’ll turn me. Even if you don’t grow tired of me within the next few months, I will grow old and die; it’s inevitable. I’ll die, and you’ll continue on with living.”

“But in the meantime–” you cut Michael off, too fired up to let him speak.

“In the meantime, I’m a meal. That’s all humans are to you and your kind. You can sugarcoat it all you want, say that I’m your ‘lover’ and that you ‘cherish’ me, but at the end of the day, I’m nothing more than a to-go meal for you. Your entire mission is to let Hell rule on Earth, and enslave the best, most tasty humans as your blood bags. Who’s to say that I won’t wake up to you draining me one day? I help you get your meals, but the only thing separating them from me is that I managed to make you laugh long enough to escape death.”

Michael knows that you have some valid points and a right to be upset by them. Tears brim your eyes, but you refuse to allow him to see you cry or show any more vulnerability than you’ve already been forced to. He kisses the back of your hand over and over again, calming you down before he speaks.

“Do you know why I have never turned any of my previous human partners?” You shake your head, shrugging. “It’s because, although I have loved each and every one of them very much, I knew that they were not compatible with eternity. None of them would be able to handle the burden that an immortal life comes with. Sometimes, they also choose to turn down my offer. I have only offered the gift to three people in my lifetime, and all three of them said no.”

“So the Countess…?”

“Is not one of my creations, no. In fact, I have yet to make a creation.”

“Why have they said no, then?”

“There was a man,” Michael says slowly, fondly, “who I was very much enamored with. It was over a hundred years ago, but I can still remember everything about him like it was yesterday. He’s the last mortal I’ve ever offered to turn, and he refused. Said that he didn’t want to live long enough to see what became of his works. He told me that his mortal life was painful enough, and that he rather wouldn’t extend it for an indeterminate amount of time. I was…heartbroken. I vowed that I would never allow myself to get close to a human again, and that I would never offer anyone the gift for as long as I lived.”

“Michael, I’m so sorry.” You reach for his face, gently tracing your fingers along his jawline.

“No need to be sorry, I’ve long since moved on.” He kisses your cheeks, letting his forehead fall against yours. “I didn’t tell you this to get pity from you. I told you this so that you would understand that I don’t treat all humans as my prey. I have a…talent, if you will, a sort of night vision for the soul. I can see exactly who each person truly is, no matter how they try to hide it.”

“So I passed that test, then?”

Michael chuckles, “you did, and so has every human I’ve ever been fond of. I can’t promise you much: eternity, that I’ll be the lover you need me to be, or even regular dates. But I can promise you that, no matter what happens, you will always hold a special place in my heart.”

“Right next to Oscar Wilde?” you prod with a cheeky smile on your face.

“Hypothetically, if I had been in a relationship with Oscar Wilde, then yes.” He’s deliberately careful with how he chooses his words, enjoying stringing you out on this mystery.

“Thank you,” you kiss him softly. “I’m sorry for being annoying lately.”

“You weren’t annoying, not in the slightest.” Michael shifts you on his lap, so you’re now straddling him. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I am.”

“Good, I can’t stand to see you upset.” His fangs are peeking over the top of his full bottom lip, and you grin before lightly touching the point.

“Are you hungry? It’s been a couple of weeks since you’ve fed from me, we should be good.” You start to sweep your hair away from your neck, but Michael stops you.

“I am hungry, but it’s a…different type of hunger,” he alludes, making your face heat up as he rapidly changes positions so you’re lying on your back. “Let me show you just how special you are to me, darling.”


End file.
